The Harlem Renaissance

 

Throughout the history of African Americans, there have been important historical figures as well as times. Revered and inspirational leaders and eras like, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, Nat Turner and the slave revolt, or Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party. One such period that will always remain a significant part of black art and culture is the Harlem Renaissance. It changed the meaning of art and poetry, as it was known then. Furthermore, the Harlem Renaissance forever left a mark on the evolution of the black culture. The purpose of this paper is to explore about the Harlem Renaissance’s origins, expressions, and internal conflicts.

 

The Harlem Renaissance

     James Weldon Johnson once said that Harlem is indeed the great for the sight-seer; the pleasure seeker, the curious, the adventurous, the enterprising, the ambitious and the talented of the whole Negro world. When one thinks of the Harlem Renaissance, one thinks of the great explosion of creativity bursting from the talented minds of African-Americans in the 1920s.

     Although principally thought of as an African-American literary movement, the Harlem Renaissance’s influence extended through every form of culture: art, dance, music, theatre, literature, history, and politics. Along with the great contribution this period made towards art and entertainment, the Harlem Renaissance also made a great impact on a social level. The Harlem Renaissance gave birth to the first African-American cultural identity and played a significant role in the political thought of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

            Jeffrey B. Ferguson stated that, around the beginning of the 20th century, a period known as the Great Migration took place. 750,000 African Americans fled the economically depressed rural South and migrated to the urban cities of the North to take advantage of the numerous employment opportunities and racially tolerant atmosphere. 175,000 of these African-Americans settled in New York City. Between the end of World War I and 1924, some significant works made by African-Americans were published; these works revealed the increasing creative fervor developing in Harlem. The groundbreaking book A Social History of the American Negro by Benjamin Brawley was published. The book that really drew attention to Harlem was Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay.

     The collection contains some of his most famous sonnets and poems. Also influential was the publication of Jessie Fauset’s novel. There is Confusion, exploring how Blacks in large cities find their identities amongst the dominating social stigmas set by Whites. With these works as a foundation, legendary black thinker and leader Charles S. Johnson wanted to do something that would expose all the talent in Harlem to the world. Starting in 1924 Johnson planned a big literary extravaganza using Jessie Fauset’s novel There Is Confusion as the reason for the event. He invited all the Black writers in Harlem and numerous influential editors and publishers to the Civic Club dinner. The editors and publishers were so impressed that many of the Harlem writers got deals that very night.

     Paul Kellogg, the editor of the influential white magazine Survey Graphic, sprung up an idea to have a special black culture issue featuring some of Harlem’s finest writers including Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jessie Fauset, and others. The next great event that launched the Harlem Renaissance was the publication of Nigger Heaven by the white author Carl Van Vechten. The bestselling Nigger Heaven brought Harlem culture to the attention of white people all over America. Finally the creation of the literary journal magazine Fire!! by novelist Wallace Thurman allowed many Black writers to stake their claim in the Harlem gold mine.

     Three of the best American writers were introduced from Fire! Wallace Thurman, creator of Fire! And the influential author of The Blacker The Berry; Langston Hughes, the most widely recognized and prominent poet to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance; and Zora Neale Hurston, arguably the greatest African-American woman writer of the classic There Eyes Were Watching God.  

     Jeffrey B. Ferguson in his book said, one way that the Harlem Renaissance contributed socially, was that it created the first positive Black identity. Although its artists produced important works of literature and music, the Harlem Renaissance proved above all to be important for its race-consciousness, a new sense that black people had a rich culture. Previously the image portrayed of African-Americans was one of an illiterate, dirty peasant. But the Harlem Renaissance sought to change all that.

     Many of the intellectuals, creative writers, and artists of the Harlem Renaissance saw as one of the purposes of the movement was the creation of more positive images of African Americans than had generally existed in American Culture before the 1920s.

     By the decline of the Harlem Renaissance, the image of African-Americans had transformed to one of urban, cosmopolitan sophistication. One of the great characteristics of the Harlem Renaissance is that all the artists worked equally on this goal. Thus, all these works made by African Americans-their paintings, their writings, their music- became the American culture at that time. Never up until that point in history were African-Americans regarded as intellectual contemporaries by their European and American White counterparts.

     Black people were able to hold their heads up high and be proud of their achievements in the world. The birth of the New Negro in Harlem had become the stigma that all African Americans around the U.S. were able to identify with. It represented liberation from the self-doubt of the past and an inauguration of an era of unprecedented optimism, pride and confidence in black culture. These were the ideals of the New Negro.

     Many critics of the Harlem Renaissance like to say that this movement did not in fact, achieve its goal of creating a new identity. They say that the Harlem Renaissance, in its attempt to create a separate, distinct culture fully comprised of African American ideals, could not escape from the historical and foundational elements of White, European culture imposed upon blacks throughout their history in the U.S.

     Another criticism of the Harlem Renaissance is that the movement reflected the beliefs of only the middle class, intellectual African Americans, otherwise known as the black bourgeoisie. Many critics believe that the goal of socially uplifting the entire black population was miscalculated.

     Where the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance remains a profoundly romantic one for the black bourgeoisie, on the streets, where the great majority of black culture is made, and its echoes are only faintly heard. Therefore, the criticism made of the Harlem Renaissance shares the belief that it was a hypocritical movement that served the interests of only the middle class of Black society.

            Despite the fact that most Harlem intellectuals did not reject the values of White, European society and relied heavily on mainstream, national publishers, it was not their goal to create an alienated culture totally unrelated to that of the White American. The Harlem Renaissance’s goal was to create a distinct African-American culture that could be assembled into a vast American culture. Called New Negroes, they sought to chisel out a unique, African-centered culture for blacks and to improve race relations while maintaining a distinct cultural identity.

     Another goal of the Harlem intellectuals was to create a movement that would serve the best interests and come to represent the goals of the entire black population. Most importantly, the Harlem Renaissance was the tool that African American artists intended to express their thoughts and creativity.

     Such views are eloquently expressed best in Hughes's essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”. Hughes's essay, which was a manifesto for his contemporaries and has served as inspiration for subsequent generations of African Americans, ends with his bold declaration:

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.” (Jeffrey B. Ferguson, 2005)

            The Harlem Renaissance also influenced the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Although the Renaissance was a literary and artistic movement, it was also a social movement, specifically through the introduction of the new racial consciousness. These efforts to help improve the black social status in America were seen through the establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, the agenda of famed black historian and sociologist W.E.B. Dubois, and the campaign of Marcus Garvey and his Back to Africa movement.

     Their objective was to create a strong sense of racial pride in order to undermine racism in America. W.E.B. Dubois felt that “A people with a higher self-esteem would be more resistant to segregation and discrimination and more willing to challenge the system than those who were demoralized”. These ideas were early Civil Rights sentiments that became a foundation for civil rights activists to build upon.

     The Harlem Renaissance’s social aspiration of forging a distinct political and cultural Black subculture of the growing American one was built upon during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. So these Harlem intellectuals realized their social, political, and cultural goals, by using artistic means to advance African American civil rights and racial equality.

   The Progress-both symbolic and real-during this period became a point of reference from which the African-American community gained a spirit of self-determination that provided a growing sense of Black urbanity and black militancy as well as a foundation for the community to build upon for the Civil Rights struggles in the 1950s and 1960s. The values that were set for the black community during the Harlem Renaissance, such as racial pride and racial equality, were the basis for the ideological goals that championed the cause of the Civil Rights Movement later on in the 20th century. It is safe to assume then, that the Harlem Renaissance did indeed play a significant role in the start of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and was a civil rights movement in its own by advocating the same ideas but spreading them through less political means and more artistic ways.

            During the Harlem Renaissance, African-Americans celebrated the joy of being Black and American. In Harlem they found something that was uniquely their own. African-American literature, art, music, and beliefs were respected and recognized on a national level. African-Americans were regarded as intellectuals for the first time. The world looked upon Harlem, the center of everything Black, for the latest fads, the latest entertainment, and the latest intrigue. Harlem became the black culture.

     Just imagine the eruption of black art, black music, black thought bubbling out of its center in New York and pouring through America and extending worldwide. The Harlem Renaissance introduced some of our greatest thinkers, our greatest writers, and our greatest musicians in the World’s history. Harlem built the foundation of civil rights ideas that would grow into the influential, life-changing Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Harlem redefined what it meant to be black, and its rebirth, The New Negro Movement, brought the black experience into every American household and into the pages of history.